High School Football: Wissahickon did the unthinkable

Staff photos by Tom Kelly IV
Wissahickon's Gordon Bentley (31) gets a hand on this ball meant for East's Jay Harris (4) during the Wissahickon vs Downingtown East playoff game which was held Friday night November 8, 2012 at Downingtown West High School.

Was there anyone outside of the Wissahickon High locker room Friday night who would have been willing to put down a shekel or two on the 16th-seeded Trojans’ chances of upsetting top-seeded Downingtown East?

No, it’s likely there were better odds posted for the Christians against the lions than Wissahickon had running up against the Cougars.

“And rightfully so,” said Wissahickon head coach Jeff Cappa. “If you were not a part of this program, why would you think we could win?”

But win the Trojans did.

And when Greg McDonough’s 22-yard field goal split the uprights with no time left on the clock at Kottmeyer Stadium, giving Wissahickon a shocking 38-35 win, the lone believers were able to revel in the biggest victory since some Philistine got popped upside the head from some little snotnose’s slingshot.

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“It was one of the greatest feelings in the world,” said Trojans lineman Eddie Bailey. “You knew everybody was against you, and you proved them wrong.”

“Everybody was down on us, but we knew it was possible.”

“We knew we had worked extremely hard getting ready for the game,” said quarterback Randy Frankenfield. “We had a great week of practice. The team, as a whole, watched more film than we ever did and our coaches came up with a great game plan. And we never doubted ourselves.”

“We just executed everything to a T.”

And to add to the unlikelihood of the unlikely win, the game-winning drive was engineered by the back-up quarterback, while the team’s leading rusher and the team’s starting quarterback were on the sidelines - although the starting quarterback, who doubles as the team’s long-snapper, got to hear, not see, the game-clinching boot.

Just another night on the gridiron, eh?

“We didn’t make dramatic changes,” Cappa said. “We made adjustments to our schemes, which is exactly what we did all year.”

The game-winning drive began after East had tied the game at 35 with 6:51 remaining in the fourth quarter.

The Trojans, who seen their offense stymied after reaching 35 points, decided to make a change.

Leading rusher Dan Murphy, who’d dislocated a finger attempting to block a kick, was unavailable. The Trojans were looking for something to spur the offense.

“They’d done a good job stopping our offense,” Cappa said. “We needed to change something. We always say we want to determine the outcome of a game. So we went to our Gun Spread offense.”

“It’s something we practice all the time. It’s was within what we do.”

The change meant that Frankenfield would go to the sidelines in favor of Dave Stellato, a player who had already scored four touchdowns from a running back position, and who had lost out on the starting quarterback job in the preseason, in part, due to contracting mononucleosis.

“It’s funny how things work out,” Cappa said. “If David had won the job that would have been the offense we would have run this year.”

Frankenfield wasn’t thrilled. But in his mind, the team came first.

“It’s tough,” Frankenfield said. “Of course I wanted to be in there. But the wildcat formation was something we thought would work, and I think we caught them off-guard with it, and it was something we’d used a bunch of times before.”

Stellato and the Trojans began to move the ball, and didn’t stop until they were inside the East 10-yard line.

Stellato was the man, carrying the ball on six of seven snaps at one point.

“Dave played great,” Cappa said, “but he’d be the first to tell you there were a lot of holes to hit. Our offensive line opened holes.”

“We have a lot of depth on our team,” Bailey said. “Nobody is the star on our team. We have players willing to step up and do what is needed to get done.”

“Dave rose to the occasion. He played one heck of a game.”

When the Trojans got close enough, McDonough was the hero - with some help from the quarterback.

“I had to snap the ball, and it was a little nerve-wracking, to say the least,” Frankenfield said. “But it’s something we practice every day.”

As it usually does, practice made perfect.”

McDonough made the kick, and the Trojans had the perfect upset.

“We basically broke it down like this,” Bailey said. “It was possible, we liked being the underdog, we liked the pressure and we liked the fact that teams were underestimating us.

“That’s not to say Downingtown East underestimated us. They are a great team and they played great. We just came out on top.”

Surprise? Shock? Disbelief?”

“When the game ended I wasn’t surprised at what occurred,” Cappa said. “I was just happy and excited for the players, because they’d paid the price.”

And in producing the program’s first playoff win, the Trojans became just the third No. 16 seeded team in District One Class AAAA history to upset a number one, following in the footsteps of Abington’s 21-20 win over Council Rock North in 2006 and West Chester Henderson’s 14-13 win over Ridley in 2010.

And yes, admittedly, there was maybe just a little Trojans’ disbelief.

“After the game we were all excited and jumping around,” Frankenfield said. “But when we got on the bus and got about halfway home, we had to stop and think for a minute. ‘Yes, we really just did this. We actually won and we’re moving on.’”

The faces continue to twist into expressions of disbelief.

The faces, that is, of area football fans who have just been told that La Salle’s Sean Coleman has no designs on playing football when he heads to Harvard University next fall.

In fact, Coleman, who hauled in 13 passes for 133 yards and all four touchdowns in the Explorers’ dramatic, 28-27 overtime win over Saint Joseph’s Prep in Saturday’s Philadelphia Catholic League Class AAAA title game at Plymouth Whitemarsh High, will play lacrosse for the Crimson — although he stops short of designating lacrosse as his favorite sport.

When asked about the thrill of scoring four touchdowns in an overtime championship game, Coleman modestly turned the spotlight toward his quarterback, Chris Kane, who has played in pain the past two weeks while still recovering from a high ankle sprain.

“It could have been anyone (that scored four touchdowns),” Coleman said. “It was really all Chris. I didn’t do much.”

“(Kane’s) the toughest kid I know. Whether he was hurting or not, he wasn’t going to tell anyone. He was going to play in this game.”

For his part, Kane gushed about the play of the Explorers offensive line and added, that in the face of almost continuous Prep blitzing, his first option was La Salle’s best football/lacrosse player.

“I was always going to look in Sean’s direction,” Kane said, “and that’s not a bad place to start looking.”

But, it was asked of Coleman again, isn’t there some sense of satisfaction in coming up with such a huge game at such an important time?

“I’m going to try and do whatever I can to help the team win,” Coleman said. “If that means I have to block on every play, I’ll do it.”